When It Smiles
by StoneScorpion
Summary: Jak wavered, but the fire kept him on his feet against the bruising torrent of flesh that writhed against him, around him – the room seemed to flex, grey walls slithering and crawling in the dimness. Erol and Jak creepyiness.


_(I put this up on DA, and I figured I might as well put it up for you guys as well. Ain't I nice?)_

_I am actually quite proud of this, strange and twisted as it may be (the things Tool does to my brain…). Just a little bit of one-sided Erol/Jak - because, let's face it, I love that sadistic maniac and I'll let him get away with anything. This entire ficlet was born from the 'savaged his heart to ribbons' line, which came to me at like midnight. Needless to say, I didn't get much sleep._

_Oh, I didn't rate this mature because, well, it's not that graphic and you can see far worse on Thursday afternoon TV (or some other day, maybe, because I have no idea). So drop me a note if you care enough to want it changed._

_Title: When It Smiles_

_Characters involved: Jak, Erol_

_Pairings: one-sided Erol/Jak _

_Word count: 1416_

**When It Smiles**

When he laughed, Jak cried…

Shadows then and shadows still, silent and foreboding in the night. They played at the corners of his vision, reenacting scenes from hours long since passed – months since, but still so fresh he flinched away from phantom hands and thrashed against bounds so readily recalled to mind. Distantly, he knew it was wrong, that these were but memories and they couldn't hurt him.

It didn't matter.

The world was grey, all colour scrubbed out of existence; his skin was wraithlike in the dull light, almost translucent and so cold he felt he might freeze, body like ice. Jak couldn't feel anything else, could barely see the walls of solid stone that surrounded him, a windowless box that never seemed to end – no edges, no distinction between one side and the other so that he felt it was almost moving. Crawling.

Contracting.

He screamed, and ice became fire – dull, pounding, searing flame that ripped into him from the inside. Tore apart his lungs and stole his breath, stopping all sound but a frenzied beat that seemed to come from every corner of his agonized body.

Jak moved, but movement ceased.

As if someone had flicked back time – one moment he was struggling free from the fire, the next he was back within the hard grasp. Hands there now, wrapped around his waist and holding him immobile, and he couldn't turn his head to see the body they were connected too. But the flames blazed…

He knew.

Fingers hooked like claws into his skin, parting flesh and splitting bone; blood flowing strongly and coming on long after it should have ceased. Long after he should have fallen and the pain should have stopped. But dreams had no place in reality, and here he thrived on still, feeling those fingers dig through him and reap their foul harvest.

Jak wavered, but the fire kept him on his feet against the bruising torrent of flesh that writhed against him, around him – the room seemed to flex, grey walls slithering and crawling in the dimness. The light fractured, breaking beside him and tossing it all into hazy fog. Boiling, seething clouds that were tinged almost pink in this place without colour.

It moved, flushing up his body, lancing through his neck where lips rested – teeth like fangs, cleaving flesh from bone and biting still, although he knew it had never been that way. A chin nestled into the bloodied curve of his collar, where the skin had been shredded and fell away in strips of pink.

There was a voice, but it eluded him.

And so the inferno raged, and even when the hands released and the teeth retreated, he could feel it burning. Even as his face met stone, body sprawling across the floor and limbs twisted unnaturally around him, he knew it was never going to stop.

Part of him didn't want it to. Some_thing_ in him didn't want it to.

But IT rose up like a wave, throwing a distorted shadow across him – dark, so dark; midnight black, tar pit black, _nightmare_ black – that only grew in the silence. A loud, keen silence weighed down with apprehension so thick he feared he would drown. But something lingered beyond his own stark terror; a thing that hungered and quivered in eagerness just out of his sight. Waiting, always waiting – for the fall of the hammer upon the anvil, for the release of tension wound up so tight it was fit to burst.

IT was moving as he quivered, curled up on himself and choked on the flame that still scraped at his insides, and those claw-hands found his skin once more.

Shoulders, bare of plate metal as they had been before, gripped hard by gloved fingers that seemed to press him down further into the dirt and the chill floor. Where stone had been was but mud and grit, gore and beetles that crawled over his face and seemed to pack his lungs; so hard to breathe as Jak sobbed against the feeling and the memory that never changed.

That body, it handled him like a child, like a rabbit to the wolf and those fangs were bared against his throat, head tipped back as he hung limply in IT's iron grip. Like a trap, they closed so slowly he could feel every inch, tearing through until they met cartilage, and here paused. A tongue lapped at the blood, stinging like acid and salt, before the intrusion was withdrawn and he could breathe again.

Hands released, and Jak stumbled forwards, sagging against the wall that seemed to rear up out of the bleakness. But as he fell against it, he turned to face his tormentor.

He knew.

Colour seemed to cling to the shape, here in this world of dishwater grey, smudged across the familiar face and through hair that seemed so like the fire that still tore at him. Eyes blazed, lips parted slightly to reveal teeth that had never been fangs, but Jak could feel the blood leaking from his throat and he believed. One hand hung limply by an empty holster, but the other was reaching towards him, suspended in mid-air and yet frozen now.

"**Jak?"** IT crooned, and he at last could hear the voice – lips drawn back, all animal as his body buckled against the stone.

"**Don't call me that!"** he screamed, voice breaking and hands balling into fists; sobbing through the words in frustration and fear, although some small part seemed to collapse as he heard himself, rebounding from the space and filling his head near to bursting.

"**What are you playing at, Jak?"** that wicked, wicked voice continued.

"**Demon,"** he hissed back. **"I hate you. I HATE you."** A fist struck out, but he staggered and the blow fell short – eyebrows lowered, that claw-hand stretching out until it almost touched his cheek.

"**Animal,"** IT called him. **"Freak. Angel."**

IT smiled, and Jak wept harder, pulse racing with dread as he tore desperately at his clothes, going for a gun that wasn't there, not in this world of terror that was so, so wrong.

"**Beautiful,"** IT whispered as that hand cupped his chin, pulling him forwards until those teeth could close on his bleeding, torn throat again. Jak whimpered, striking out but making no impression no matter how many times he connected, feeling those fangs that weren't really there.

Panicked, Jak scrabbled against that chest, armor skittering away under his fingers as he fought it off, twisting to the left and feeling his throat go, crumbling away under those fangs, cartilage shredded and blood running in rivers – but did it make a difference, when his whole body was gore and gristle? When his insides were unraveled by flame?

And IT laughed as he hammered his fists bloody in useless, hopeless rage; looking at him through heavy-lidded eyes, so painfully familiar that he felt his breath stop, throat constricting as he realized that his resistance would bring him no escape. **"Look at you, Jak,"** IT snarled. **"You are filth. An abomination – scream for me…"** Eyes lowered, voice slithering over thin lips.

"…**hero."**

IT moved.

No claws this time, to shred his skin like paper and peel it away, scratching marks of possession into the lines of his back and trying to tear out his eyes. No fangs to sink deep into his thrashing body, with a tongue hot and wet in the rush of blood that never slowed.

There didn't need to be.

_Fight me _- that breath slithered through his chest, so like ice that he choked and yelled against the chill and suddenness of the sensation. Fire and frost met; converged, and he was beyond all rational hope.

He folded in on himself, but there was no salvation – not from the hands that grabbed him or the heat that turned him to ash, disgusting and black inside; his fear and rage twisted into despair, surrender.

_Cry for me _- that obsession laced his blood, made like acid, sap-slow, and sucked him towards the illusion of oblivion.

What did it matter here, and now, that the rabbit had become a wolfhound? That the demon had long since been pulled back into the ground?

What did it matter that, in reality, IT was dead?

_Scream for me –_ that love savaged his heart to ribbons, and he cried out in agony; none heard, no one came.

Jak still screamed when Erol smiled, even if it was only in his dreams.


End file.
